Chichester Festival Theatre "astounded" at young people's lockdown innovation and resilence

Dale Rooks, LEAP (learning, education and participation) and youth theatre director at Chichester Festival Theatre, says it feels like we fell asleep in one world and awoke in another.
Dale RooksDale Rooks
Dale Rooks

But she has been astounded at the resilience and imagination the youth theatre has shown – and at the success of the ways the CFT has reached out to the wider community during these difficult months.

“Once we were alerted to the fact that there was going to be a lockdown, I sat down and devised a plan, initially a ten-week programme, just looking at what we could still achieve digitally, what we could do online or remotely that was going to enable us to connect to the young people because I knew they really needed us at this time.

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“To be honest, I think of Chichester Festival Youth Theatre as one big extended family. It goes beyond the young people turning up for a session. They have got such strong friendships between them, and they do so much as a community. It binds them together. And they were at a loss. We were all at a loss. And to be honest, without Zoom I would have gone stir crazy. At least we were seeing faces, albeit on a screen. I was connecting with people every single day, and the young people were connecting with us, devising their own projects.”

Particularly outstanding was their Stand By You project, members filming themselves in isolation singing the classic song Stand By Me for a video intended as a comfort to people in a Chichester home. In the event, it went much further.

“I was absolutely astounded at what they were able to achieve technically and what they were able to teach themselves. And in a way, I think this has all made them more innovative and more imaginative, to use different devices.”

It was about reaching out and staying in touch: “Within the youth theatre we have young people with additional needs, and they need routine. To be able to talk to them at their normal regular session time was really comforting for them.”

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Beyond that, older members of the youth theatre kept in touch with older, isolated members of the community. The “elders” company also worked on plays radio-style.

“We also did a development week on Pinocchio (the intended youth theatre Christmas show) on Zoom, working with our writer who is in New Zealand and a group of youth theatre members reading and re-reading the text and making tweaks.

“On Zoom, you don’t get the rhythm of the piece. You can’t pick up the cues in the same way, but it gave the writer and the composer enough to work on. What has astounded me overall is how much we have been able to use technology to connect with so many people.” Archive facts about past productions had a remarkable 771,000 views; the theatre’s streaming of past productions had more than 150,000 views; and the theatre’s LEAP team engaged with more than 140,000 people – remarkable figures.

“And I do think coming out of this that there is going to be a little bit of a legacy, that I won’t be jumping on a train and dashing off to Manchester for a meeting in the way I would have done. You just don’t need to do that. You can connect on Zoom. But I can’t tell you, though, just how joyous it has been to be back in the building. I have been back a couple of weeks, and it is different. We are all dealing with a new kind of normal, with a one-way system and markings on the floor for social distancing. But it was just so refreshing to be back.”

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As for whether Pinocchio will be able to go ahead or not, Dale says she is working on the basis that it will. The theatre will take guidance from the National Association of Youth Theatres. But whatever the regulations, Dale is determined to make it work: most likely, if they can go ahead, she will be rehearsing two separate casts of about 30 each.

If it happens, it won’t be the huge numbers on a stage that we usually associate with the youth theatre.

“If it doesn’t happen, it doesn’t happen, but in our heads at the moment, it is going to happen.”